Speaker 1: My best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling,
Speaker 1: or the ideal set up, or even the desired outcome.
Speaker 1: They include moments like getting superpowers from electric shock. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe that isn't all true, but this is my story,
Speaker 1: and I believe I'll tell it how I want to.
Speaker 2: There must be DNA in humans coded to anticipate the spring,
Speaker 2: and it feels like some might even have DNA wired
Speaker 2: for telling turkey stories. The Northern Hemisphere's South Stepping Waltz
Speaker 2: is a celebration to many types of folks, but to
Speaker 2: none more than the hunter of the wild turkey. The
Speaker 2: most noble spring indicator of the wild things that audibly
Speaker 2: speak is the gobble of the wild turkey, which, by
Speaker 2: all measurable variables able to be assessed by humans, it's
Speaker 2: become vividly apparent this gobble is of higher rank than
Speaker 2: of all nature's claraty of trumpets.
Speaker 3: But then again, maybe the turkey hunters are biased.
Speaker 2: This is episode one of the Bear Grease Turkey story series.
Speaker 2: We've gathered six storytellers from Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Speaker 2: We've got a best selling novelist, a TikTok celebrity, an
Speaker 2: undercover wildlife agent, a museum curator, a Mississippi gas company man,
Speaker 2: and a ninety two year old Appalachian mountain hunter. Turkey
Speaker 2: story is just hit different in March, and I really
Speaker 2: doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it is about that bird that
Speaker 4: really sticks out in my mind. I guess it's more
Speaker 4: the friendship than the bird. It's a testament to that
Speaker 4: good medicine that is spending time in the outdoors.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll.
Speaker 3: Tell the story.
Speaker 2: Of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: places we explore. The story of the wild turkey in
Speaker 2: North America is one of ups and downs, some of
Speaker 2: it natural, some of it man induced. The time of
Speaker 2: your birth often determines your outlook on the bird as
Speaker 2: a resource, and it's the people that use them that
Speaker 2: have historically valued them. The Most Native Americans use their meat, bones,
Speaker 2: and feathers in practical ways, but also sacred the birds.
Speaker 2: Early Europeans found the place stacked with an estimated ten
Speaker 2: million turkeys and used them as a plentiful, life saving
Speaker 2: food source, but market hunting the eighteen hundreds would almost
Speaker 2: extirpate them, wiping them from ecological memory, their numbers dwindling
Speaker 2: down to thirty thousand birds contined wide by the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: but the modern conservation movement has helped restore them to
Speaker 2: around seven million birds today, and they've even been introduced
Speaker 2: into areas in the Western US they never inhabited pre
Speaker 2: European settlement.
Speaker 3: Modern turkey numbers.
Speaker 2: In the East peaked in the late nineteen nineties and
Speaker 2: early two thousands, right when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: However, in the last.
Speaker 2: Twenty years, turkey numbers have declined in many areas in
Speaker 2: the eastern United States, none more than in my home
Speaker 2: state of Arkansas. If there's one thing I've learned from
Speaker 2: my grandfather, Lewin Nukom, who spent the last thirty five
Speaker 2: years of his life lamenting the loss of the bob
Speaker 2: white quail, it's that it's not wise to put your
Speaker 2: hope and passion into a ground nesting bird. But for
Speaker 2: some of us it's a little too late. We love turkeys.
Speaker 2: Most of the wildlife stories in our times are positive,
Speaker 2: but of late we've been in the valley of what
Speaker 2: we hope is a cycle. Turkey numbers are on the
Speaker 2: decline in many areas, but I think it's producing the
Speaker 2: generation of people that truly value the wild. Turkey scarcity,
Speaker 2: or even perceived scarcity, is producing appreciation and action for
Speaker 2: turkey and turkey habitat, maybe more than ever.
Speaker 3: Let's get to the stories.
Speaker 2: Our first storyteller is from Leland, Mississippi, and we're sitting
Speaker 2: in the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. Billy Johnson is as
Speaker 2: Mississippi as a cypress and muddy water.
Speaker 3: This story is about a bird he named the blue.
Speaker 2: Yodler, but you'll see it's really about a man iconic
Speaker 2: in Billy's life, a riverman.
Speaker 5: I'm Billy Johnson and I'm the director of the Missippi
Speaker 5: Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leyland, Mississippi. I started hunting on
Speaker 5: a place in the Mississippi River that's on the Arkansas
Speaker 5: side of the river, and there was an old black
Speaker 5: man that had lived on born on the island, lived
Speaker 5: on the island. His name was Clay Matthews, and he
Speaker 5: had a single shot twelve gage shotgun with about a
Speaker 5: thirty inch barrel. And he believed that when the hen
Speaker 5: got ready to do business with the gobbler, that she
Speaker 5: wasn't gonna yelp but four times. And you know most
Speaker 5: of the time people calling or up five times. You know,
Speaker 5: that would be the secret. But anyway, you know, when
Speaker 5: I was a little kid, you know, he'd tell me
Speaker 5: about you know, when you deer hunting, you want to
Speaker 5: get behind a tree and look around it. When you're
Speaker 5: turkey hunt you got to get a tree wider than
Speaker 5: you are and you sit sit face, you know, facing the.
Speaker 6: Turkey and all.
Speaker 5: So anyway, as the years went by, I mean I
Speaker 5: turkey hunted a good bit, but I got to where.
Speaker 6: I liked the crappie finish a lot better.
Speaker 5: One year, we got thirteen inches of rain in three days,
Speaker 5: and the lake came up six or seven feet and run.
Speaker 6: The crappery fishing.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of little places up in the hills
Speaker 5: of Mississippi that used to have a store in a
Speaker 5: post office and maybe at one point of school, and
Speaker 5: it just got got down to where there the towns
Speaker 5: just went away. And usually what would happen, what happened
Speaker 5: to start with is wherever it was a spring looked,
Speaker 5: where it was water in the hills, you know, it
Speaker 5: would it would, it would be little towns would spring up.
Speaker 5: And then his farming became more capital intensive and less
Speaker 5: labor intensive, they just you know, shrunk back down. And
Speaker 5: one of those places that we hunt up in Holmes County, Mississippi,
Speaker 5: it's a place where they had planted all the cotton
Speaker 5: fields and pines, and it was some tall hardwood ridges
Speaker 5: behind behind the pines. There was a big gobbler that
Speaker 5: would that would would gobble on one.
Speaker 6: Of those big hardwood ridges, and he uh.
Speaker 5: He'd get real excited and almost like he was yodling
Speaker 5: in the middle of the goblins. And so I nicknamed
Speaker 5: him the Blue Yodler. But you couldn't call. If you
Speaker 5: tried to call to him, he wouldn't come. I hunted
Speaker 5: the turkey twenty one days, and it was like I
Speaker 5: stepped into a different world from a crappee fishing point
Speaker 5: of view to the turkey hunting. And I would have
Speaker 5: to try to guess which way the turkey was gonna
Speaker 5: go that morning and not call, and a big storm
Speaker 5: came up. One morning he gobbled two hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: seven times, and finally it was just a day loge
Speaker 5: I'm talking about. When I started walking out of the woods,
Speaker 5: my boots got full of water, and you know this,
Speaker 5: and that I just didn't know how, you know, when
Speaker 5: you got a three hundred and sixty degree area in
Speaker 5: the woods and you trying to figure out which way
Speaker 5: that turkey's gonna walk that next morning. Finally I lucked
Speaker 5: up and he hooked up with another gobbler, and uh,
Speaker 5: they hadn't gobbled that morning, and so I started calling
Speaker 5: and the other goblin was answering and made a complete
Speaker 5: circle around me, and I mean, I didn't have that
Speaker 5: good place to hide, and as they would gobble from
Speaker 5: a little bit farther round, I'd had to kind of
Speaker 5: try to ease around, ease around, And I finally saw
Speaker 5: the gobler.
Speaker 6: Coming and killed it.
Speaker 5: And it was the big gobbler that I'd been hunting,
Speaker 5: you know, for twenty one days.
Speaker 6: And for the.
Speaker 5: Rest of that day until when I went to sleep,
Speaker 5: I was just on top of the world. And I
Speaker 5: woke up the next morning time to go turkey hunting,
Speaker 5: And about ten minutes after I woke up, it hit
Speaker 5: me that I didn't have that turkey to hunt anymore.
Speaker 6: And it was just like a.
Speaker 5: Complete loss of what to do about how to try
Speaker 5: to kill the turkey. Finally killing the turkey and your
Speaker 5: old cloud nine. And the next morning you realize that
Speaker 5: it's over, and it just just complete, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't know if it's disappointment, but just just sad that
Speaker 5: that it's ended.
Speaker 6: You know, when a.
Speaker 5: Deer or a turkey here are a big bass that
Speaker 5: you lose, or whatever takes your mind over, completely takes
Speaker 5: your mind over, and you know all of your thoughts
Speaker 5: are about that, you know where you you're thinking about
Speaker 5: it when you're awake and dreaming about it when you're sleeping,
Speaker 5: and you know, that's the way I was with with
Speaker 5: that turkey. I think about that, that that old that
Speaker 5: old black man Clay Matthews a lot. He was the
Speaker 5: last of those lamp lighters. They had floating lamps, caroseen
Speaker 5: lamps that marked the channel and the river. He would
Speaker 5: row out there and fill the lamps up with Caroseene
Speaker 5: and you know this and that, and then it's another
Speaker 5: guy living on another island south there, north of there.
Speaker 5: They would have those those little areas. But I often
Speaker 5: think about how simple his life was. You know, he
Speaker 5: had a he had a garden by his house and
Speaker 5: had tin around the bottom and you know, fenced in
Speaker 5: where the deer, you know, couldn't get in there. And
Speaker 5: he raised hogs and chickens, and he hunted, you know,
Speaker 5: he hunted squirrels and the turkeys, and you know, his
Speaker 5: wife fished, and I mean they lived off of what
Speaker 5: the river and the island afforded. There he would always
Speaker 5: kill a couple of big gobblers the last week or
Speaker 5: two of the season, which would be like from the
Speaker 5: twentieth of April for the first of night. He knew
Speaker 5: where some mulberry trees were, and those turkeys would come
Speaker 5: once the mulberries got right, and he knew just to
Speaker 5: set up in there around those trees, and he knew
Speaker 5: turkey hunting inside out, and he was self talked. One
Speaker 5: of my prize possessions. We opened this wildlife museum in Leyland.
Speaker 5: A guy that used to hunt with us on that
Speaker 5: island came in with a paper bag. He said, here,
Speaker 5: I've had this long enough. And it was Clay Matthew's
Speaker 5: turkey call box call, and whoever made that call had
Speaker 5: put it together instead of gluing it together, he'd used
Speaker 5: those little cobbler tacks like somebody working on in the
Speaker 5: shoe shop used. So, I mean, it's no telling where
Speaker 5: he got it or whatever. But but after Clay died,
Speaker 5: you know, he went in his house and found that
Speaker 5: found that old turkey call.
Speaker 6: So he died in the.
Speaker 5: Late seventies, so I mean he lived on that island,
Speaker 5: you know, his whole life. It was a whiskey maker,
Speaker 5: real famous bootlegger up there named named Perry Martin, and
Speaker 5: Clay made whiskey for Perry Martin and uh, and it
Speaker 5: was just kind of the way of life on the river,
Speaker 5: I know, Clay. Clay told me that before they had
Speaker 5: outboard motors, that the three most important things on the
Speaker 5: river was flower, tobacco, and whiskey. And then once they
Speaker 5: had got to use an outboard motors in gasoline, so
Speaker 5: that was the foremost important things. But we had a
Speaker 5: drug store and we sold garden seeds and plants and stuff,
Speaker 5: and my daddy would fly up there in the spring
Speaker 5: the turkey hunt, and he would bring clay like cabbage
Speaker 5: plants and sweet potato plants, and enough seeds.
Speaker 6: You know, for his garden and stuff.
Speaker 5: So between his chickens and his hogs, and caught what
Speaker 5: he shot, what his wife caught.
Speaker 6: You know, they ate what they had. They used to
Speaker 6: have what they called blue.
Speaker 5: Logs, and they were like cypress. Mostly the river would
Speaker 5: change and the current would change and those things would
Speaker 5: shoot up. He would tie them up on the bank.
Speaker 5: All of the rivermen that collected those logs for the
Speaker 5: lumber companies had their own knot. Other words, if the
Speaker 5: timber buyer came up there, he could look at the
Speaker 5: knot hold them together and know who they belonged to.
Speaker 5: That was something that Clay Clay did for money. And
Speaker 5: the other thing he trapped bobcats and uh, you know
Speaker 5: when spring came and he had all his hides, he
Speaker 5: had put him on his back and he would take
Speaker 5: his boat go across that white river cut off walk
Speaker 5: across Big Island, and somewhere out in the middle of
Speaker 5: Big Island.
Speaker 6: Was a huge hollow tree.
Speaker 5: He had cooking utensils and stuff in that tree in
Speaker 5: a lantern, you know, care thing, and he'd spend the
Speaker 5: night there, and then he had walked to the other
Speaker 5: side of Big Island, and a friend of his had
Speaker 5: take him across, and he would go to Arkansas City
Speaker 5: and sell his furs.
Speaker 6: And come back. Clay was a man of nature.
Speaker 5: In other words, he would go out in the fall
Speaker 5: and according to high high off the ground the hornets
Speaker 5: nests were, he would predict whether it was going to
Speaker 5: be a coal winner or warm winner or whatever. The
Speaker 5: higher they were up in the tree, the colder the
Speaker 5: winter was gonna be. If they were low, it was
Speaker 5: gonna be a warm winner. And in those days, I
Speaker 5: mean we had a we had a fill turkey season.
Speaker 5: But before they started having that fall turkey season. All
Speaker 5: of the guys in my dad's generation were big squirrel hunters,
Speaker 5: and they a lot of them.
Speaker 6: They hunted with twenty two rifles.
Speaker 5: And Clay could clean squirrels like you wouldn't believe how
Speaker 5: fast he could clean them, and wouldn't be a hair on,
Speaker 5: but he would. He would rub his hands over those
Speaker 5: those squirrel hides in a corner.
Speaker 6: To ever, how much how thick the hair.
Speaker 5: Was, he could predict what the winter winter was gonna
Speaker 5: be whether it was gonna be cold or not.
Speaker 6: So I mean he learned what he knew from nature itself,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: And you think, in this day and time, with all
Speaker 5: this instant this communication and all this stuff, how rich
Speaker 5: a life he had.
Speaker 6: People like Clay.
Speaker 5: Matthews were living in a world that was rapidly changing.
Speaker 6: It didn't change for him, but the rest of the
Speaker 6: world around it.
Speaker 5: In this world we live in now, with the Internet
Speaker 5: and Instagram and Twitter and emails and text and all that,
Speaker 5: it makes me wonder what life ever get.
Speaker 6: To be like it was with him living on those isles.
Speaker 2: It's clear that when Billy thinks about turkey hunting, it's
Speaker 2: filtered through the life of Clay Matthews. The story of
Speaker 2: the Blue Yodler had nothing to do with the man
Speaker 2: on the surface. That is, it happened long after Clay
Speaker 2: had passed away, But still Billy can't talk about him
Speaker 2: without talking about Clay.
Speaker 3: What an incredible life he lived.
Speaker 2: And Billy did a good job of describing how an
Speaker 2: individual animal at times can overtake you. As frustrating as
Speaker 2: it can be, the older I get I realize how
Speaker 2: unique those times are.
Speaker 3: It makes me grateful.
Speaker 2: If you're near Leland, Mississippi, you're gonna want to stop
Speaker 2: by the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. It's truly an incredible
Speaker 2: place that will impress you.
Speaker 3: Tell them that I sent you.
Speaker 2: I wish every state had one of these, and I
Speaker 2: wish every state had a Billy Johnson too. He's done
Speaker 2: an incredible job. Our next storyteller is named Jack Hall.
Speaker 2: He's from Tennessee. If there ever was a living turkey
Speaker 2: hunting legend, it's him. And it's not because he had
Speaker 2: a TV show, wrote a book, or got a turkey slam.
Speaker 2: In some ways, it's a shame to even introduce you
Speaker 2: to him in this way. I asked the man to
Speaker 2: tell me one of his favorite turkey stories. He really
Speaker 2: deserves more. Jack is ninety two years old. I met
Speaker 2: him through my friend Russ Arthur, who will hear from
Speaker 2: At the end. Russ says that Jack was one of
Speaker 2: the original true mountain turkey hunters in East Tennessee. Jack
Speaker 2: ran Hall Chevrolet in Cleveland, Tennessee. He had the resources
Speaker 2: to travel and hunt in easier places, but he never did.
Speaker 2: He loved the mountains. Here's Jack with some history and
Speaker 2: a funny story.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, Well I'm Jack Hall and I live in Cleveland, Tennessee,
Speaker 7: and I was born in thirty one.
Speaker 6: I'm ninety two.
Speaker 7: I started hunting the mountains when I was about ten
Speaker 7: years old when we moved here. My dad was a
Speaker 7: big hunter and fishermen. But when he hunted, we didn't
Speaker 7: have turkeys here, but he was shown. When I started
Speaker 7: hunting the mountains, it was squirrel hunting. That's all we did.
Speaker 7: We didn't have a turkey season back there. We'd run
Speaker 7: those ridges, squirrel hunted. What I think of that day,
Speaker 7: I think, why did we do that? But uh, but
Speaker 7: we loved being into the mountains.
Speaker 6: Then.
Speaker 7: I suppose when I was twenty five, thirty years old,
Speaker 7: we started turkey hunting. Oh for many years, they only
Speaker 7: had like a two day hunt maybe three times a year,
Speaker 7: and that's all. That's all the turkey hunting did. I
Speaker 7: used to hunt a lot with a fred about it
Speaker 7: worked at Bowl Water and his name was Clyde Steiner.
Speaker 7: And uh, one time I decided I'd get one on him.
Speaker 7: I was all the time trying to pull one on him.
Speaker 7: Be he said his family said he was gullible because
Speaker 7: I was all the time getting something. But uh, but anyway,
Speaker 7: I walked in this place and he was going to
Speaker 7: pick me up later, you know. I told him give
Speaker 7: me about two or three hours and come down and
Speaker 7: pick me up. So I walked a good ways about
Speaker 7: two miles in, and uh, what I'd done is I
Speaker 7: had a friend about it had a bunch of eb us,
Speaker 7: and I asked him he'd give you a couple of
Speaker 7: evu eggs, and I bought him from me and I
Speaker 7: got a gas mask, and uh, I put those m
Speaker 7: u eggs in and packed newspapers a ready and everything
Speaker 7: through an open shoulder and uh, and I built a
Speaker 7: desk about that big around and I put these two
Speaker 7: inbu exit. Before I put the exit, I said it
Speaker 7: that they could call turkeys for about an hour, you know.
Speaker 7: So it looked like the desk was hued, you know.
Speaker 7: And then I put those two eggs in. And when
Speaker 7: I went out, he I med eve. He said, you
Speaker 7: do the good. I said no, but you would not
Speaker 7: believe what I failed. And he said, what do you find?
Speaker 7: He said, I found a nest back there. I don't
Speaker 7: know what it is. I said that it must have
Speaker 7: been a dinosaur egged there's two of them, innut it.
Speaker 7: And he kept questioning me about that. He said, I
Speaker 7: don't want to see them. I said, it's about a
Speaker 7: mile or two back in there. He said, I don't care.
Speaker 7: Let's go. I want to see it. So we took off,
Speaker 7: walked and walked and all its uphill all the way
Speaker 7: to it. And when we got there, you'd have to
Speaker 7: you'd have to dore him to appreciate it, because he's fuddy. Anyway,
Speaker 7: he looked at that legs. Soon as he walked up,
Speaker 7: he said, what in the name of God?
Speaker 6: And I started.
Speaker 8: I said, I don't door.
Speaker 6: I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 7: He's and I got down there and had a stick
Speaker 7: and I said, he said, don't move that thinking he said,
Speaker 7: I don't believe it's a legg He said, I believe
Speaker 7: it's a bomb. Somebody believe there was are bombs. I said, well,
Speaker 7: I don't believe her bomb. Anyway, I had more fun
Speaker 7: with him about to do it at it. We took
Speaker 7: him back to town and he had a workshop. We
Speaker 7: took him out there and he kept saying, don't touch
Speaker 7: those things, and I cared him. He said, I still
Speaker 7: believe her bomb. I said, give me a drill. That
Speaker 7: he fussed about that and I drilled it. He saw
Speaker 7: it was an ad and that I got to think
Speaker 7: him later, I better tell him better. That he was
Speaker 7: older than me. Thought he'd lively have a heart attack.
Speaker 7: So I called him and told him. But that's what
Speaker 7: his his family told him. I heard of all the
Speaker 7: telephone that that he said. I can't believe you always
Speaker 7: believe him. Yeah, I told him I was afraid he'd
Speaker 7: have hearts. That well. I could tell a lot of
Speaker 7: stories about killing turkeys, but I thought i'd.
Speaker 6: Tell what about but he just knew they were bobs.
Speaker 7: You know. I still would love to turkey out in
Speaker 7: the mountains, but but uh, legs just won't let me
Speaker 7: do it any boy. It's been about three years ago,
Speaker 7: and I have no idea how many of you, but
Speaker 7: I'd always killed one or two a year, you know,
Speaker 7: but that's all you could kill, you know. I've never
Speaker 7: traveled much and done in turkey out and just just oh.
Speaker 2: Good, Jack Hall, What an incredible guy, and what a
Speaker 2: sense of humor the old em you ag trick. And
Speaker 2: I hadn't even told you that Jack is an expert
Speaker 2: ballroom dancer too. Well, I hate to turn the table
Speaker 2: too quickly and disorient you. But our next storyteller is
Speaker 2: about six point five decades younger than Jack. Macy Watkins
Speaker 2: is from Gordon, Georgia. She's an artist, a hunter, and
Speaker 2: a fly fisherman. I think you'll enjoy her story about
Speaker 2: gaining superpowers from a hunt. And yep, Macy is our
Speaker 2: resident turkey hunting TikToker.
Speaker 1: I'm doing to the mut My name's Macy Watkins, and
Speaker 1: my best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling,
Speaker 1: or the ideal set up, or even the desired outcome,
Speaker 1: but yet they are plagued with adversity, bloopers and such.
Speaker 1: They're always colorful, never dull, and sometimes victorious. They include
Speaker 1: moments like getting superpowers from electric shot. Okay, maybe that
Speaker 1: isn't all true, but this is my story I believe,
Speaker 1: I'll tell it how. I want to more on that later.
Speaker 1: So I had a pretty rough season in Tennessee. Was bounding,
Speaker 1: determined to kill a bird there, entered a tournament that
Speaker 1: just did some other hunting in Tennessee and just came
Speaker 1: up with no luck. Hunted multiple locations just came up
Speaker 1: shorts like it wasn't meant to be until the divine
Speaker 1: appointment of I met Slade and we got to turkey
Speaker 1: hunt and doubled up and that was our first date.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning. Finally got one in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: So after that, now I went back to Georgia. Slade
Speaker 1: and calls and says, let's go back to Tennessee. I
Speaker 1: have somewhere we can hunt. So I said, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm spontaneous, so I just I picked up went back
Speaker 1: to Alabama and we drove back up to Tennessee, hunting
Speaker 1: with our friend Tyler Sanders. So us three deep in
Speaker 1: the woods. Slade kills his bird very quickly. So but
Speaker 1: my luck or lack of luck, actually, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that easy moving forward. The opportunities to kill did
Speaker 1: not come easy. Hunted another day, had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: kill some if they would have just taken a few
Speaker 1: more steps, which I'm sure a lot of turkey hunters
Speaker 1: have those similar stories. But we were right on a line,
Speaker 1: probably had them ten feet in front of us, and
Speaker 1: Slade said, hold off, we gotta do it by the book.
Speaker 1: And I'm a person of integrity too. I enjoyed doing
Speaker 1: things the right way. If you're gonna do something, it's
Speaker 1: worth doing right. So we did not shoot those turkeys.
Speaker 1: Probably could have shot a few, Yeah, So we held off.
Speaker 1: So another day passed, did not get Macie her bird.
Speaker 1: We said we could hunt the next morning. Then we
Speaker 1: had some heavy rain coming in, so we went out
Speaker 1: and we just we were kind of running and gunning,
Speaker 1: and we parked. The truck started calling. We immediately heard
Speaker 1: one fire back and I was like, oh, snap, that's
Speaker 1: not that far away. And then we call again and
Speaker 1: this turkey was coming in hot and bothered. He was
Speaker 1: fired up. We were like, dang, that's closer. So the
Speaker 1: time was ticking. We were on a clock, us versus
Speaker 1: the bird. Who's gonna get there first? And it was
Speaker 1: absolutely my last chance. Yeah, So it was probably mid morning.
Speaker 1: We had hunted other spots that morning. We actually saw
Speaker 1: this patch of cedar trees outside of the woodline. I
Speaker 1: don't even think we actually had time to make it
Speaker 1: into the woods, because that's how fast everything was happening.
Speaker 1: Everything that happened from here on out is the funny part.
Speaker 1: So there was a fence, and you know, the guys
Speaker 1: are a little taller than me, so they easily got
Speaker 1: over it, and they wanted to like me to step
Speaker 1: in their hands and get over the fence, but I
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, that's too hard. I'm just jumping.
Speaker 1: It's not even that high. Anyways. Well, I backed up,
Speaker 1: I got a running start, and I ate my words,
Speaker 1: but after that, I also ate dirt that I tripped
Speaker 1: over the fence. But like I said, there's clumsiness and
Speaker 1: adversity plagues all with my turkey hunts. I'm a very
Speaker 1: clumsy person. And one thing I always say that it's
Speaker 1: not a turkey hunt for me until I saw until
Speaker 1: I busted. Doesn't matter how short or long a turkey
Speaker 1: hunt is, I'm usually gonna fall just because I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's my trademark. But the fence caught my rubber
Speaker 1: light boot. I almost made it. It's just this much
Speaker 1: that got me and I hit the ground and the
Speaker 1: guys just start laughing at me. I'm like, y'all, shut up,
Speaker 1: we got a bird.
Speaker 5: To go kill.
Speaker 1: Quit messing around. They were just laughing. I'm like, we're
Speaker 1: we were on the clock. Quit laughing.
Speaker 5: Come on.
Speaker 1: And we finally got her composure, and when we ran
Speaker 1: over to the patch of cedar trees. I mean it
Speaker 1: didn't take long after that. We only had a minute
Speaker 1: or two once we got set up. Then we just
Speaker 1: finished the deal of the bird came in and just
Speaker 1: if I had one word to describe how that turkey
Speaker 1: looked was haggard. He was just road hard and put
Speaker 1: up wet, and actually he was wet because it had
Speaker 1: started raining pretty good at that point. And that's really
Speaker 1: when I become one with the turkey, because at that point,
Speaker 1: after three days of hunting hard and coming up short,
Speaker 1: so tired and getting rained on and my hopes were down,
Speaker 1: became one with the turkey because I was also road
Speaker 1: hard and put up wet. So he came in. I
Speaker 1: guess he was like, so where's this hen I was
Speaker 1: here and and just oblivious to us. They're hiding. And
Speaker 1: now I pulled the trigger and got it done. We
Speaker 1: had some high fives, and when I say I absolutely
Speaker 1: dirt rolled him, I did. We were on a decline,
Speaker 1: so made a successful shot, rolled down the hill a
Speaker 1: little bit, and we were pretty high. It was awesome turkey.
Speaker 1: So when I kill a turkey, I usually just can't
Speaker 1: believe it. I'm surprised and excited every time, I mean,
Speaker 1: mouth opens just I usually laugh out of just pure happiness.
Speaker 1: There's just such joy in it, especially when there's so
Speaker 1: much adversity, so many things that might go wrong, coming
Speaker 1: up short in Tennessee with all my hunts there, it
Speaker 1: just makes the moment sweeter.
Speaker 3: Lots of high fives, hugs.
Speaker 1: Picking people up, yelling at the same time. I'd say,
Speaker 1: so Macy finally got her bird. It's an amazing moment.
Speaker 1: And then we headed out of the woods having my
Speaker 1: bird over my shoulder. But what stood in the way
Speaker 1: of getting back to the truck was that dang fence
Speaker 1: and the guys got over it. And this is a
Speaker 1: fence that we had permission to hot, by the way,
Speaker 1: I just want to point that out. So I got
Speaker 1: to the fence, I'm like, well, that fence ain't hot.
Speaker 1: I already touched it when I fell over it. But
Speaker 1: I made one step over it with my turkey, and
Speaker 1: I'll be dan if it didn't shock me. And I
Speaker 1: screamed so loud, and Slade was in the truck laughing
Speaker 1: so hard. Tyler, who was trying to help me over,
Speaker 1: was laughing. And you know, like when people laugh at you,
Speaker 1: but that you're there laughing a little harder than you're laughing,
Speaker 1: So I.
Speaker 8: Was a little embarrassed.
Speaker 1: But anyways, I really feel like that day I gained superpowers,
Speaker 1: some kind of turkey hunting superpowers from my electric voltage
Speaker 1: that I got shocked with. And the thing is, that's
Speaker 1: not a lie, because that was my last bird of
Speaker 1: the season last year. So time will tell. If you
Speaker 1: see me out there on the Dagone killing spree just
Speaker 1: having a record year this year, you'll know Macy's got
Speaker 1: something that the rest of us don't have. And that's
Speaker 1: because I gained superpowers that day. This story ends in
Speaker 1: a trout stream in North Carolina. So later that week
Speaker 1: I went back home, and I love trout fishing. That's
Speaker 1: my mother passion turkey hunting, trout fishing, or what I
Speaker 1: was put on earth to do. I tied a bunch
Speaker 1: of flies that week, and I took a bunch of
Speaker 1: feathers from my turkey and tied some pheasant tail niphs,
Speaker 1: which I affectionately called my turkey tail niphs. We do
Speaker 1: a bunch of euro niphing in North Georgia and the streams,
Speaker 1: And if you look at my page, you'll see that
Speaker 1: I catch the occasional giant trout because I do have
Speaker 1: access to a few trophy streams, but my passion is
Speaker 1: going way up in the mountains, way past cell service
Speaker 1: and catching wild rainbows, brook trout with your native to
Speaker 1: our area and brown trout. So I almost got my
Speaker 1: Cherokee slam. That's where I was fishing in Cherokee, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: not far from my house. I caught every fish that
Speaker 1: day on flies that I had tied with my Tennessee bird,
Speaker 1: which is just all encompassing full so moment, I feel
Speaker 1: like turkey hunting makes me a well rounded outdoorsman, but
Speaker 1: also a resourceful and more appreciative angler.
Speaker 2: Thank you, miss Macye for the story, and we'll see
Speaker 2: if those big talking superpower predictions come true. It's go
Speaker 2: time and showtime in the spring woods.
Speaker 3: Right now. I'll be paying attention and I'll be rooting
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: Be prepared to be disoriented even yet again as we
Speaker 2: move across the state line to the great state of
Speaker 2: North Carolina to our next storyteller, David Joy is as
Speaker 2: country as cornbread. And if you lined up ten people
Speaker 2: and we're asked to guess which one was an award
Speaker 2: winning novelist who just got off a European book tour.
Speaker 2: I bet you wouldn't pick him, but you'd be wrong.
Speaker 2: If you didn't, you might have didicted that he was
Speaker 2: a ridge running Southern Appalachian turkey hunter by the length
Speaker 2: of his legs. He's a tall fella and a bona
Speaker 2: fide turkey hunter. Here's David's story and it involves a
Speaker 2: man getting shot.
Speaker 4: So I guess one of the things that I like
Speaker 4: most about turkey hunting is that you have the potential
Speaker 4: to develop like a partnership with another person that you're
Speaker 4: hunting with. And in some ways that differs from other
Speaker 4: pursuits in the outdoors. So, you know, especially like whitetail
Speaker 4: hunting or something where you're you know, spending a lot
Speaker 4: of time in a tree by yourself. With turkey hunting,
Speaker 4: if you can find the right partner, it serves as
Speaker 4: a tremendous advantage. And I've been very fortunate to develop
Speaker 4: a relationship with with just an incredible sportsman who's probably
Speaker 4: about twenty five years my senior, but just a hell
Speaker 4: of a turkey hunter. I mean, it's killed hundreds of turkeys,
Speaker 4: and you know, through the years I've had. I've had
Speaker 4: the chance to hunt with him a lot, and he
Speaker 4: and how I have kind of developed a relationship where
Speaker 4: he knows what I'm going to do and I know
Speaker 4: what he's going to do, and because of that, we
Speaker 4: have the opportunity to kill a lot of birds that
Speaker 4: we probably couldn't have killed by ourselves. And so really
Speaker 4: that's become one of the things that I look forward
Speaker 4: to most every Turkey season, is just spending time in
Speaker 4: the woods with him, because I know one day I'm
Speaker 4: not going to have that. So, you know, jumped to
Speaker 4: last year. This was real early in the season because
Speaker 4: I was hunting in South Carolina, just over the line,
Speaker 4: and I was up on a mountain. I was hunting
Speaker 4: by myself, and I had been on this bird multiple
Speaker 4: days and it had woked me every day, and it
Speaker 4: kind of played out the same way this morning. And
Speaker 4: I sent this buddy of mine a text message, you know,
Speaker 4: telling him what had happened, and he texted back, I've
Speaker 4: been shot. And I immediately thought he was joking, you know,
Speaker 4: I thought he was just making it up, and you know,
Speaker 4: I sent something back and he said he said he
Speaker 4: was at the hospital and that he was he was
Speaker 4: going to be fine, but that he had been shot.
Speaker 4: And where I was on the mountain, it was kind
Speaker 4: of an odd spot because typically you don't have service
Speaker 4: in the mountains, but I had very good service there,
Speaker 4: and so my immediate thought was, Okay, he's safe. But
Speaker 4: I knew he was at the far eastern end of
Speaker 4: North Carolina, and we live in the mountains of North Carolina.
Speaker 4: So my immediate thought was his wife, And it was like,
Speaker 4: how is his wife going to get down there to
Speaker 4: the hospital? But so eventually she she reached out and
Speaker 4: said she was fine, she was headed that way, and
Speaker 4: and that was that. Uh So, so what wound up
Speaker 4: happening was was that another hunter shot this buddy of
Speaker 4: mine thinking that he was a turkey, and he had
Speaker 4: just enough time to kind of roll on his side
Speaker 4: so that he took the majority of the shot into
Speaker 4: his ribs, his shoulder. He was shot with long beard
Speaker 4: copper plated number fives, and somehow or another, you know,
Speaker 4: just by the grace of God, it none of it
Speaker 4: got him in the head. And thank god they were shooting,
Speaker 4: you know, copper plated lead instead of tungsten, because because
Speaker 4: I think it would have been a different story. I
Speaker 4: think he'd be dead. So he immediately, you know, is
Speaker 4: at the hospital. They're working to get the shot out
Speaker 4: of him. They put him on antibiotics. He comes home
Speaker 4: pretty much that next day, but within a week there
Speaker 4: was a secondary infection that started that luckily another doctor
Speaker 4: caught and you know, they wind up working on him
Speaker 4: and get him healed. But you know, that doctor told
Speaker 4: him that if he hadn't taken care of that secondary infection,
Speaker 4: it would have killed him. It would have traveled to
Speaker 4: his brain that had killed him. So all of this
Speaker 4: is going on, and turkey hunting is kind of out
Speaker 4: the window, you know, And and I'm devastated for him,
Speaker 4: but I'm thankful that he's alive. And so my turkey
Speaker 4: season last year was real funny, you know. But I
Speaker 4: decided I was gonna hunt with an old Winchester Model
Speaker 4: twelve because that's what he always hunted with. So I
Speaker 4: hunted all season with an old Nickel still nineteen twenty
Speaker 4: eight Winchester Model twelve twenty gage. So time goes on
Speaker 4: and through the month of April, and I'm you know,
Speaker 4: men are not wanting to share their feelings, so it
Speaker 4: was always hard to try and you know, feel him
Speaker 4: out on where he was mentally. And so I spent
Speaker 4: a lot of time talking to his wife, and she
Speaker 4: kept saying he needs to get back in the woods,
Speaker 4: and I thought she was right. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: that's not one of them things you can pressure somebody
Speaker 4: to do, you know. I mean, he had just been
Speaker 4: shot and thank god, you know, didn't die. But you know,
Speaker 4: that's an incredibly traumatic experience that was obviously going to
Speaker 4: linger pretty heavy. And so it was this delicate balance
Speaker 4: and act of not wanting to push him but also
Speaker 4: knowing that where he needed to be was in the
Speaker 4: Turkey woods. And so we started having those conversations and
Speaker 4: I just kept telling him, you know that if it
Speaker 4: made him more comfortable, I wouldn't carry a gun. You know,
Speaker 4: We'll just go in the woods together. And you know,
Speaker 4: he didn't really want to do that, and you know,
Speaker 4: I'd almost giving up on asking him, and out of
Speaker 4: the blue, he sends me this message one evening and
Speaker 4: he said, I've got a bird pinned down and I said, well,
Speaker 4: let's go chase him. He said, you know, he said,
Speaker 4: we'll meet me at the house the next morning, and
Speaker 4: so I did and we rode out through the mountains.
Speaker 4: It was first day we hunted, you know, together last season.
Speaker 4: We head out this ridge, you know, to try and
Speaker 4: hear if this bird is roosted where he thinks it'll be.
Speaker 4: And we get out there, and sure enough, that bird
Speaker 4: starts hammering across the valley before daylight, and you know,
Speaker 4: I know that it's on. I know, you know, Raymond's
Speaker 4: got him pinned down, and I know for a fact
Speaker 4: he's going to know the landscape and know the moves
Speaker 4: we need to make to get on him. So it's super,
Speaker 4: super steep, and we just drop off the side of
Speaker 4: this mountain through a bunch of laurels and rodeo and
Speaker 4: get down into the bottom along this field, and the
Speaker 4: birds are roosted at the bottom of that field, and
Speaker 4: we kind of make a plan on what we're going
Speaker 4: to do. And right about the time that I was
Speaker 4: going to go sit at my tree, I could just
Speaker 4: since that he was really nervous. It was something I'd
Speaker 4: never experienced with him before, because he knows how safe
Speaker 4: I am with guns. He's been around with me with
Speaker 4: guns all the time.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I always tell him that when the gun's loaded, I
Speaker 4: tell him when it's unloaded, and he just started asking
Speaker 4: a lot of questions about the gun, and so I
Speaker 4: told him, I said, Raymond, I said, I'm gona unload
Speaker 4: my gun. I said, I'm not going to touch it.
Speaker 4: I said, I'm gonna get behind you, and I said,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to touch it.
Speaker 6: I just wanted him to hunt.
Speaker 4: So we start calling to this bird and they pitch
Speaker 4: out into that field, and they had a bunch of
Speaker 4: hens with them, and for the most part, we spent
Speaker 4: the morning, you know, calling to Noah Vail, trying to
Speaker 4: call a bird that had everything he wanted. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, we spent the morning calling at him, and
Speaker 4: every once in a while he'd answer, but never made
Speaker 4: a move up there towards just just stayed in the
Speaker 4: bottom of that field. And about mid morning, probably around ten,
Speaker 4: those hens started to leave the field to go to nest.
Speaker 4: When they did that, Tom started following them, and I
Speaker 4: had already made a move further away from Raymond. My
Speaker 4: plan was to try and pull those birds up to us,
Speaker 4: and that that field made a real hard like a
Speaker 4: hard right dog leg back up above us, and so
Speaker 4: my plan was to try and make it sound like
Speaker 4: there had been birds that moved up that field that
Speaker 4: they couldn't see. And so I was up there and
Speaker 4: I was calling and they were still answering me. And
Speaker 4: it was late season. So I started gobbling on a
Speaker 4: box call, and every time i'd gobble on that box call,
Speaker 4: they'd answer me. But so those birds are working up
Speaker 4: the field, and as turkeys you know, always do, they
Speaker 4: did not cooperate. They went the opposite direction and they
Speaker 4: went up the left hand side, and that gobbler just
Speaker 4: just kept on, you know, gobbling with his hens up
Speaker 4: up through the woods. And I thought, well, this is over.
Speaker 4: And about that time I seen a turkey pop up
Speaker 4: over the hill in that field, and he was on
Speaker 4: the right hand side, and he was coming in silent.
Speaker 4: I think he was probably a subordinate bird, you know,
Speaker 4: that had broken off from them others, but was coming
Speaker 4: to check out all that noise he'd been listening to
Speaker 4: all morning. And so he pops up and he starts
Speaker 4: walking through that field. I mean, just gorgeous. The sun's
Speaker 4: just hitting him perfect, and I'm watching him work up
Speaker 4: through that field and I think any minute he's gonna
Speaker 4: get in front of Raymond, and you know, and Raymond's
Speaker 4: gonna smoke him. And it gets to the point where
Speaker 4: I'm convinced that he's past him. And all I'm thinking is,
Speaker 4: you've let that bird get past you because you want
Speaker 4: me to kill it, because that's something he would do.
Speaker 4: That's just him.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: He's always like he's always thinking of others before he's
Speaker 4: thinking of himself. So I'm thinking, you idiot, man, You've
Speaker 4: let this bird get by you, and now we've got
Speaker 4: to hope it gets all the way up here to me.
Speaker 4: And right about the time that that that thought is
Speaker 4: settling in my mind, I don't hear Raymond, but I
Speaker 4: know he must have called because that bird threw his
Speaker 4: head up and he just walloped him out there in
Speaker 4: that field. And I don't know what it is about
Speaker 4: that bird that really sticks out in my mind. I
Speaker 4: guess it's it's more the friendship than the bird. And
Speaker 4: I think it's it's just a testament to, you know,
Speaker 4: what the outdoors and what the sporting life means to
Speaker 4: people who can't live.
Speaker 6: With out it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a testament to that good medicine that
Speaker 4: is spending time in the outdoors.
Speaker 2: That was a good story. David and a serious one.
Speaker 2: I think you should write a novel about a man
Speaker 2: getting shot by a stranger in the backwall turkey hunting,
Speaker 2: and the shooter escapes on.
Speaker 3: A crooked hoofed mule.
Speaker 2: Years later, the shot turkey hunter unknowingly saves the life
Speaker 2: of the mule trapped in swirling Mississippi River Eddie. The
Speaker 2: steed presumably belonged to the mysterious shooter. We don't know
Speaker 2: who he is, and the beast has a unique brand
Speaker 2: on his left haunch BP three.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, the mule dies three days later.
Speaker 2: And I mean, it's a long story and David would
Speaker 2: do such a better job telling it. But it's kind
Speaker 2: of a plot twist and weird. But the shooter was
Speaker 2: actually the man's brother, and they didn't know about each
Speaker 2: other because of the father's double life, and their father,
Speaker 2: a turkey hunter, had accidentally told them both about the
Speaker 2: same ridged a turkey hunt on where they faithfully met
Speaker 2: on the morning of the shooting.
Speaker 3: Oh my, at the drama, And the.
Speaker 2: Mysterious brand stood for black panther three because three generations
Speaker 2: of those Hillbillies believe they'd seen a black mountain lion.
Speaker 2: Like I said, David, would tell it better anyway. In
Speaker 2: all seriousness, the thought of getting shot turkey hunting is
Speaker 2: a nightmare. And if you don't know much about turkey hunting,
Speaker 2: it's a unique hunt because we roam around in the
Speaker 2: woods making the calls of a turkey without any hunter
Speaker 2: orange on. Because turkeys can see color, most firearms hunting
Speaker 2: requires people to wear hunter's orange to be visible. Hunting
Speaker 2: accidents are rare but possible. But honestly, to me, the
Speaker 2: other version of the nightmare is being the one who
Speaker 2: made the mistake and shot someone. I think about that
Speaker 2: more than getting shot. Be careful out there, folks. We're
Speaker 2: now going to go back to Leland, Mississippi, to the
Speaker 2: Wildlife Heritage Museum to meet our next storyteller who is
Speaker 2: from the Delta. His name is Roy Stubbs, and he
Speaker 2: worked for the gas company. Roy is in his eighties
Speaker 2: and it's clear that he has a unique appreciation for
Speaker 2: the wild turkey. I was so glad to be able
Speaker 2: to capture his story in a little bit about his history.
Speaker 6: My name's Roy Stubbs.
Speaker 9: I lived in the Mississippi Delta and that was the
Speaker 9: place to be if you had the opportunity to hunt turkeys,
Speaker 9: especially along the Missippi Roup. My desire for turkey hunting
Speaker 9: started at early age when a friend of ours and
Speaker 9: the town I lived in but aught Misissippi with keller
Speaker 9: turkey and bring it by when if we'd have our
Speaker 9: little Wednesday morning at school, and he would bring his
Speaker 9: turkey in and lay it down and talk about the turkey,
Speaker 9: and then he'd take a leave off of a tree
Speaker 9: of some kind and use that as its call. And
Speaker 9: so it kind of stayed with me, and so I
Speaker 9: fast forward then several years and I had the opportunity
Speaker 9: to become a member of a honting club along the
Speaker 9: mist every rubber and there was lots of turkeys, lots
Speaker 9: of turkeys, and the timeframe were talking about it's a
Speaker 9: late nineteen sixties, so it'd been around those turkeys for
Speaker 9: the first time in the woods. I just had this
Speaker 9: desire building. But it hunting turkeys just so much different
Speaker 9: than the hunting anything else. You just have to have
Speaker 9: a lot of knowledge. So I had a friend of
Speaker 9: mine there was a barber in a small town near me,
Speaker 9: and I used to go and set any and talk
Speaker 9: with him. He made his own malcohols and he taught
Speaker 9: me a lot about calling turkeys. He taught me how
Speaker 9: to make a malcohol even and I hammered out a
Speaker 9: piece of aluminum and some rubber and I made my
Speaker 9: first first turkey I killed in nineteen sixty seven. I
Speaker 9: called it up with my mouth call.
Speaker 6: Later on I developed the weight.
Speaker 9: That used my natural voice, and I used it most
Speaker 9: of all time until I got too old too. Turkey
Speaker 9: hunters have a bond all across the country. That's it's
Speaker 9: just a part of hunters and camaraderie, the love we
Speaker 9: all have for each other and for the sport itself.
Speaker 9: The turkey is a magnificent bird and it's not to
Speaker 9: be taken lightly that when you could kill, to thank
Speaker 9: the Lord for naming you have this opportunity and his creation.
Speaker 9: So in nineteen eighty four, had I lived in Greenville, Mississippi,
Speaker 9: which is right on Misssippi River. My club I hunted
Speaker 9: on with just a few minutes north of town, and
Speaker 9: so started the season off and had a turkey that
Speaker 9: has caught my attention right away. The main line Levy,
Speaker 9: if you've never been there. This runs from Memphis to Vicksburg.
Speaker 9: There's dikes on it we call dikes that are running
Speaker 9: and they're there for to control the water flow as
Speaker 9: it flows on toward the Gulf and so on. These
Speaker 9: we traveled on these dikes. There our road on top
Speaker 9: of them, and you can drive down for you woods
Speaker 9: and most of them, a lot of them go all
Speaker 9: the way to the bank of the Mississippi. So we
Speaker 9: ride down them in Stoton, call and the turkey answer.
Speaker 6: We get to they get a hunt on.
Speaker 9: So this particularly year started off with this turkey. And
Speaker 9: I noticed the first few times I went, I'd drive
Speaker 9: down there.
Speaker 6: He would cop them.
Speaker 9: So I said, okay, I know where you are, I
Speaker 9: know how to give you. Well that that started my
Speaker 9: season long turkey honk. So I would go out and
Speaker 9: call that turkey in he would gobble, and so we
Speaker 9: would get in. I'd move, he'd move, and literally literally
Speaker 9: I would go every day and want that turkey. With
Speaker 9: my job there I had that time. I'd get all
Speaker 9: my men working and I'd sneak off and get my truck,
Speaker 9: drive up there and call and he'd answer me and
Speaker 9: I'd go hunting. So we did this day in and
Speaker 9: day out. It's the weather permitted and sun Sundays off
Speaker 9: mostly well, we came down it's gonna be the last day,
Speaker 9: last day of trucky season. Well, unfortunately, on the last
Speaker 9: day of trucky season, my wife had us a social
Speaker 9: event to go to. Well, I thought I had a train,
Speaker 9: but she slept a scept through on men. So I'm
Speaker 9: thinking about my turkey. I got one last chance, one
Speaker 9: last chance to get him. And so I had many
Speaker 9: encounters through the year. I'm crawling up on snakes. I
Speaker 9: had deer walk up to me check and see what
Speaker 9: I'm doing. I mean, coons follow some of armidellas because
Speaker 9: I did a lot of belly crawling that food that year,
Speaker 9: trying to crawl up on this turkey. He was a
Speaker 9: smart he's smart smart, and he.
Speaker 6: Was really fun to hunt.
Speaker 9: And it was just calling experience and learning experience that
Speaker 9: I'll never forget. So the last days and so I
Speaker 9: get there bout the middle afternoon and I start my hunt.
Speaker 3: I got a plane.
Speaker 6: I know what.
Speaker 9: I know what he's done the last few times I
Speaker 9: haunt him. So I've come in a different direction, changed
Speaker 9: everything up, got a different call. But I was gonna
Speaker 9: have to do my crawling, so I eased up and
Speaker 9: kept going going, and he's kept coming a little bit.
Speaker 9: Finally I had him in range. I guess one of
Speaker 9: my disadvantages was I was laying down and it's hard
Speaker 9: to chew the gun hold it up. Besides the turkey
Speaker 9: ahead and anyway, I got it all set, got all ready,
Speaker 9: got my gun up, and just looking at that turkey,
Speaker 9: just the magnificence of him, and I already sometimes think
Speaker 9: the Good Lord has a hand and who we are
Speaker 9: and what we do, and he also has control over
Speaker 9: what happens in the woods so many times with us,
Speaker 9: and I'd rather blame the Lord, I think sometimes than
Speaker 9: blame myselfthing not being able to make it, you know,
Speaker 9: make the kill or whatever. So very carefully I had
Speaker 9: got my gun up and got my head down on it.
Speaker 9: I thought, just right, which is difficult to do laying
Speaker 9: down and not can't move.
Speaker 6: You can't move.
Speaker 9: So I get everything just right. I pulled the trigger,
Speaker 9: and the turkey had expression on his face. So he
Speaker 9: just lifted up and flew right over the top of me,
Speaker 9: about five feet over my head, and he said goodbye
Speaker 9: for the day, for the season.
Speaker 6: And I got up.
Speaker 9: And I said tip my head to him, and I said,
Speaker 9: thank you, thank you for a break. Season, and I
Speaker 9: think that Turkey today, if he's in Turkey Heaven, I know.
Speaker 2: What a classic gentleman overflowing with appreciation for just getting
Speaker 2: to chase one and who knew there was a Turkey Heaven?
Speaker 2: These boys from Mississippi are just made different. And I'm
Speaker 2: extending a genuine Bear Grease hat tip to mister Roy Stuves.
Speaker 2: Our final storyteller is Russ Arthur from Cleveland, Tennessee. If
Speaker 2: Russ's name sounds familiar, it's because he was on our
Speaker 2: genuine Outlaw series of Bear Grease episodes fifty two through
Speaker 2: fifty six a couple years ago. Russ was the undercover
Speaker 2: agent who hunted with Louisdale Edwards in western Arkansas in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties. Louisdale said Russ was the best turkey
Speaker 2: caller he'd ever heard. Russ is one of those guys
Speaker 2: who has a story much bigger than a single turkey story,
Speaker 2: and it was an honor to sit with him and
Speaker 2: hear this one about his late father, Jim Arthur.
Speaker 8: Well, my name is Russ Arthur. I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 8: in a community called Hickson, Tennessee, right outside of Chattanooga.
Speaker 8: I was blessed to have a father who was a
Speaker 8: passionate outdoorsman. My dad killed his first turkey in nineteen
Speaker 8: sixty one. Of course, I was only two years old
Speaker 8: at that time, so I don't remember that. But he
Speaker 8: would always hunt on this management area where there was
Speaker 8: only the season. Back then in the sixties, there was
Speaker 8: only one or two days a week that you could hunt.
Speaker 8: There were very limited counties in the state of Tennessee
Speaker 8: that had turkeys. He would always come home and talk
Speaker 8: about his adventures. The hunts were normally Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Speaker 8: and he would always go up on a Thursday in camp.
Speaker 8: He had an old station wagon fifty something mile station
Speaker 8: wagon and he would go up and camp out of it,
Speaker 8: and he would normally hunt on Friday and Saturday and
Speaker 8: come home Saturday, even for church on Sunday. As a kid,
Speaker 8: growing up seven eight nine year old kid, I could
Speaker 8: not wait to hear the stories.
Speaker 6: And it was later in.
Speaker 8: Life that I figured out that my dad had done
Speaker 8: a very noble thing, and that is he took the
Speaker 8: curiosity of a kid and turned it into a passion.
Speaker 8: Because he would give me just enough information about what
Speaker 8: he was doing where it was at, and I had
Speaker 8: this this mystical place in my mind that I wasn't
Speaker 8: old enough to go to yet. And he didn't drag
Speaker 8: me along as a six year old or a seven
Speaker 8: year old or an eight year old. He waited till
Speaker 8: I got old enough that I could I could handle
Speaker 8: a single barrel, and he started taking me. So I
Speaker 8: had this passion to my dad. And one of my
Speaker 8: favorite turkey hunting stories will have to go back to.
Speaker 8: And this is if I get emotional, I'm sorry. Well,
Speaker 8: he had an old call and he called it sweet Thing,
Speaker 8: and it was and I've got that call with me today.
Speaker 8: He bought it for I think it was three dollars
Speaker 8: from a gentleman by the name of Earl Dishram. As
Speaker 8: a ten, eleven, twelve thirteen year old kid, I had
Speaker 8: heard all these names, the Earl Dishram, the Bobby Card,
Speaker 8: the Jack Hawks, the Charlie Elliotts, the Jen Denton, the
Speaker 8: Dan Layman's, the Glenn Honeycutts. These were all people's names
Speaker 8: that were these true turkey hunters. And I was kind
Speaker 8: of like a little kid that was hearing about a gunfighter.
Speaker 8: You know, these were legends you know, when I first
Speaker 8: started getting to come and stay at camp, I wouldn't
Speaker 8: meet all these guys. And we had a place in
Speaker 8: the mountains that he had taken me to the year before,
Speaker 8: and we'd heard a few turkeys. And I was thirteen
Speaker 8: this particular year, and I was carrying a single barrel
Speaker 8: twenty ga and he said, sign, I'm gonna take you
Speaker 8: on this ridge. And there was an old trail. He
Speaker 8: called it the Indian Trail, and it was just a
Speaker 8: hunter trail, nothing that's marked on a map. And he
Speaker 8: took me up there when I was thirteen, and he
Speaker 8: set me in a gap and he said, you stay here.
Speaker 8: I'm going to go on out the Indian Trail. And
Speaker 8: after about two hours, if you hadn't heard anything, come
Speaker 8: on out the trail. I will either be on the
Speaker 8: trail or I'll put a rock in the middle of
Speaker 8: the trail and draw you an era with a rock
Speaker 8: telling you which direction I went, and you wait right there. Well,
Speaker 8: that was our way of communicating. So I'll admit I'm thirteen.
Speaker 8: I'm sitting there. I cannot wait for it to get daylight.
Speaker 8: And I thought it would never get daylight. And I
Speaker 8: never heard anything now I'm going to have to back
Speaker 8: up again. The only call that he bought me what
Speaker 8: was called a lynch jet turkey call. I still got
Speaker 8: it today. In my opinion, it was a terrible call.
Speaker 8: It was a very small slate calls insect in wood
Speaker 8: and had a burnt wooden peg and it was good
Speaker 8: for a cluck or a pr but that was about it.
Speaker 8: So an hour after daylight, I couldn't stand it. I
Speaker 8: needed to go find Daddy. I was ready for some action.
Speaker 8: So I ease out the trail and I get, oh,
Speaker 8: probably three or four hundred yards from where I had left,
Speaker 8: and I hear a turkey just hammering, and I mean,
Speaker 8: it's just hammering its hat off, and I think I
Speaker 8: can call that turkey up. You know, I've sat with
Speaker 8: my dad and I watched this last year. I can
Speaker 8: do this. And I set down on that call, and
Speaker 8: it was terrible. And that turkey gobble and and it gobbled,
Speaker 8: and I just kept doing it, and it gobbled every time,
Speaker 8: and then it started going away. Next thing I know,
Speaker 8: I heard something coming up through there. It was my
Speaker 8: dad and he was he was frustrated I'd run that
Speaker 8: turkey off of him.
Speaker 6: He had it.
Speaker 8: He was getting ready to shake hands with it.
Speaker 6: He came.
Speaker 8: He came right straight from where that turkey was gobbling,
Speaker 8: and all he said was, he said, son, He said,
Speaker 8: we need to work on your calling, you know. But
Speaker 8: I've got to tell this story if you think that
Speaker 8: there's not a higher being. Ten years ago tomorrow, my
Speaker 8: dad passed on February tenth, twenty fourteen. Well, we were
Speaker 8: getting ready to bury him, and he had left in
Speaker 8: his workshop. He was very meticulous. There was a wooden
Speaker 8: box full of notepads. They were all the same making model.
Speaker 8: And I reached in. I said, I've never seen this before.
Speaker 8: And I did not know that my dad had kept
Speaker 8: a diary. And the literally the day we were burying
Speaker 8: my dad, I found this in his workshop and it
Speaker 8: was as if he had set that out for us
Speaker 8: to find. I reached in and I pulled out and
Speaker 8: I said, what is this? And I opened it up
Speaker 8: and it was a journal. And when I opened that up,
Speaker 8: it turned till April twelfth, nineteen seventy two, and I
Speaker 8: got to read about what he thought about that morning
Speaker 8: when he left me in that gap. I closed it up,
Speaker 8: I put it back, and I'm not read anymore since.
Speaker 8: So one of these days I'm going to take that
Speaker 8: and go the mountains and go the cabin and read it.
Speaker 8: But it was pretty amazing that the very day that
Speaker 8: he left me for the first time in the mountains,
Speaker 8: that I pulled one of the seventy two books out
Speaker 8: and turned that date.
Speaker 6: So what did he say?
Speaker 8: It was just talking about how proud he was, and
Speaker 8: I didn't be Honestly, I didn't read it all. But
Speaker 8: when I recognized where it was at, what we had,
Speaker 8: what he was writing about, it would just overwhelmed me.
Speaker 8: I closed it up. Well, But anyway, that was a
Speaker 8: great man, what.
Speaker 2: An incredible story in man. Jim Arthur was the first
Speaker 2: chapter president of the Chattanooga National Wild Turkey Federation Chapter,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and three he was inducted into
Speaker 2: the Tennessee Turkey Hunters Hall of Fame. Russ said there
Speaker 2: was a time when the state was trapping turkeys out
Speaker 2: of areas where Jim hunted, and many people were mad
Speaker 2: about it. But around the campfire, Jim would advocate to
Speaker 2: his peers that this was a short term sacrifice for
Speaker 2: a long term game. He was influential as a grassroots
Speaker 2: spokesman for the Wild Turkey relocation, which ended up being
Speaker 2: the salvation of the wild turkeys. I truly love these
Speaker 2: Turkey Stories episodes, and, like mister Roy Stubbs said, turkey
Speaker 2: hunters share a unique bond around the unique bird. I
Speaker 2: can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. We've
Speaker 2: got another Turkey Stories episode coming up. We put our
Speaker 2: heart and soul into these episodes documenting the stories of
Speaker 2: our collective history. Be sure to check out Brenton E's
Speaker 2: Mississippi River Expedition film on the Meat Eater YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: and if you're out west, check out the Meat Eater
Speaker 2: Live tour schedule. I'm gonna be there at every show.